A tale of two rides

It is amazing how different two rides in the same week can be. A few weeks ago I was planning on doing my first time trial as a way to get back into racing in a way that would be very unlikely to result in a crash. The weekend before I had done some very good hard rides and my legs were feeling good. I was unable to do my usual Monday night recovery ride because I got stuck on campus later than I should have been. By Wednesday I went out on my usual KOW (king of Wednesday) ride (race) and my legs felt horrible. I got dropped much earlier than I had wanted. After a slow ride home I decided that it was not worth the $40 and getting up at 4am on Saturday to drive 2 hours to go to a 40K time trial just to come in dead last.

That Saturday I got up to do my usual ride and felt much stronger than I expected. In fact I stayed on to the lead pack about 10 miles longer that usual. My best Saturday ride the year!

I was disappointed with not racing that day until I looked at the time for the cat 5 racers and the winning time was around 1 hour. I know that I could not have finished in 1 hour so I felt ok with my decision. Hopefully some consistent training over the next couple of months will put me in good shape for a possible TT in the fall.

I have decided to give the Hotter than Hell another shot. After last years ride I figured that I had checked it off my list and was not planning on going back but I am getting than itch to go again. Plus a number of my friends are planning on going so I can't pass it up.

One of my riding friends is planning on making his racing come back (to a cat 3) next year and will be training to do so. I am going to try and put a training schedule together for us and get my self in back in racing shape so when I can start racing again I will be able to get to a cat 3 in a season.

Enough for now, time to go to sleep and attack the last week of being in TX without Nici.

What a crazy last month and a half

The last month and a half have been abusolutly crazy and busy. The weather has gone from nice in the 70's with little wind to mid-40's with rain and wind and back and forth every few days. Atleast it seems that way lately. In the last 6 weeks I have gone from having a good amount of time to train and get some work done to being back in school and having no time what so ever. I made a trip down to Austin for the first time in about 15 years and had a great time at a conference down there, had some good BBQ at Stubb's and made it to Mellow Johnny's bike shop (Lance's shop).

Mellow Johnny's is a really sweet shop with several very nice bikes on display from Lance, Popovich, and Hincapie. The folks were really nice and while I did not get a chance to try any coffee it smelled great!

Now that I am back in school I am taking three stats/reseach methods classes one of which has a lab and I have several studies going on. I am really looking forward to having a few studies finished and if all goes as planned several more papers to work on! The training is coming along and my legs are begining to feel a little better. I was able to put in some good efforts on my own this last week and I was able to stay with the Saturday group a lot longer last Saturday than I have been lately. With all of the work that I had to do this weekend I ended up not riding at all this weekend but I have done enough work in advance now so I should be able to get some real training in this week.

So what I am training for? Well I am not doing any more road races or crits until I can get a used bike that I don't worry about crashing and not having a bike to ride until I get my PhD. So the alternative is finding a free bike to race or...the Time Trial! Fortunatly with all of the racing that goes on in the state there are several TT's that I can do within a short drive. The first TT of the year is the Horse Country Time Trial Series on March 7th. We will see how it goes. Fortunatly it is only 20K and still early in the season so when the 2nd and 3rd race of the series come around in May and July I should be much faster and able to really do well.

So hopefully I can make sure to schedule everything a little better so that I can do well in school, train so that I am flying on the bike, and find time to do a better job posting on here.

Things to look forward to.....my new team kit. Hopefully it will be here soon.

Endurance Racing

So with my weekend cyclocross race chances at an end I was happy to see today that DORBA ( Dallas mountain biking group) has decided to grow their frozen four hour series to three six hour races. I have not done any 6 hour races since I moved from North Carolina and to be honest I have only ridden my mountain bike twice since I have moved to Texas. I am really excited about the series and the first race is scheduled for 12/13 so I guess it is time to hop back on the bike and try to find some form. Hopefully the last three weeks of time off the bike will have been a nice "rest" and allow me to still have some legs so that I can actually do the first race in the series.

I may have missed the big cross races but endurance mountain bike races will be a nice way to start back with some winter base miles for this next season.

Late Spring makeover

So every spring a addition of new parts to replace the old parts that have worn out is called for. Maybe in most sports gear is not as technical and does not require as much maintenance but this is cycling and we have to replace parts prior to them getting too old. New chain and cassette (so that they don't wear out the cranks), new tires (so they don't wear through and you get a bad flat), new handlebar tape (b/c the old stuff looks worn out). Same old drill as usual. I had been acquiring parts since Christmas and I was waiting to put them on.

New parts:
















My bike prior to the changes:

















It was the first time that I had tried to change my own cassette but I had seen it done and it was supposed to be easy. Well it would have been had my cassette not dug into the cassette body!!! Fortuatly thanks to Bluebonnet bikes for telling me what was going on and making me feel like I was not an idiot and then a trip to Bicycles Plus to pull off the cassette and put the new one on I was in business. Plus I got to drool on the wheels that I would love to have. After getting home and getting some real work done ( I am writing a paper) I was able to do a really good job cleaning my bike and getting the new stuff on.

The completed makeover:















So I had to get the grey/black tires b/c Performance was out of the red ones that look so much better with the bike but they were cheaper and I decided that for this year I could go with the grey/black ones!

Now the last of the makeover was completed by Sunday. Thanks to new hair clippers my hair is much shorter and the legs are back to looking like a real cyclist.


We did make it down to Dallas this last weekend to watch a few races at the Matrix crit. The races were very good and despite the heat the shaded sidewalks made watching the races a lot of fun. It did make me want to be out on the course racing myself! So now to work on getting back into racing shape and doing some real races!